Does artificial intelligence kill jobs?
The recent Workers World article “Capitalism isn’t working, no jobs to be found” by Martha Grevatt exposes the huge issue of unemployment caused by the bankrupt capitalist system. (workers.org/2025/09/87909/ )
President Donald Trump was well-known before becoming president by the image of him mouthing “You’re fired” on television. Now Trump is exposed for trying to cover up the built-in problem of unemployment under capitalism. His attempted coverup was the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dr. Erica McEntarfer, for simply reporting the news that the 4.3% unemployment rate remained steady and very few jobs had been added.
But there is a relatively new feature to the employment picture, and that’s artificial intelligence (AI), a great acceleration of automation. Opinions about automation tend to depend on whether you’re a worker or a boss. The bosses say automation creates jobs, ignoring losses of working-class jobs, while the workers say automation kills jobs. Workers under capitalism know that great advances in productivity aren’t in their interest.
A ‘Prime’ example
The crisis of jobs can best be seen at Amazon which, along with a few other monopolies, is trying to take over the distribution markets of capitalism. If the top bosses had their way, Amazon would dominate the whole retail and wholesale sectors of the capitalist economy. Amazon has opened many warehouses and
hired thousands of workers in recent years, but now comes the news that the company’s hiring is going to be over, and the company hopes to replace more than half a million workers with robots! Who knows what the final cost of jobs lost because of Amazon’s monopoly practices will be?
This revelation is outlined in internal strategy documents viewed by the New York Times. While Amazon wants to eliminate hiring by using robots instead of people, the company expects to sell twice as many products by 2033. At Amazon’s most “advanced” warehouse in Shreveport, Louisiana, entry workers make only $20/hour. There are 1,000 robots in the warehouse which, along with AI, have allowed Amazon to eliminate 25% of its workers. Amazon aims to spread the Shreveport plan to about 40 more warehouses soon.
“Once they figure out how to do this profitably, it will spread to other employers,” says Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economic scientist. (nytimes.com, Oct. 21)
But the workers have a right to a job for their own maintenance and survival, and they will fight for it! The right to a job is a life-or-death issue.
Mass layoffs in tech
Beyond Amazon there has been a big increase in layoffs at high-tech and AI companies, with 76,000 workers having been cut in 2025. Rivian laid off 800; Intel, 21,000; HP, 2,000 and Salesforce, 1,000. Microsoft laid off 15,000 workers in May and June on top of 10,000 in 2023. The Tech Layoff Tracker says that so far in 2025 there have been 579 separate layoffs impacting 161,859 people at tech companies. (trueup.io)
AI has been called the greatest technological transformation of the modern era. But don’t let anyone tell you it creates jobs under the capitalist social order. Under capitalism AI is a technology that can and will be used to increase the exploitation of the working class and oppressed peoples globally.
AI by itself could help eliminate the drudgery of work and open up many possibilities for enhancing workers’ quality of life. The working class needs to be informed of its possibilities and dangers, but it’s not even consulted and has been misinformed. There are efforts among the working class and unions to reign in the damages caused by artificial intelligence.
